


The Lion Roars

by badgertastic



Category: Exalted
Genre: Character Introduction, Delzahn, Exalted 3rd Edition, Gen, Taking the Second Breath, Trans Character, dereth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-16
Updated: 2016-05-16
Packaged: 2018-06-08 21:21:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6873805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badgertastic/pseuds/badgertastic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short introduction to my 3rd Edition Exalted character, a Dawn Caste dereth Delzahn, and how he came to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lion Roars

He had been on the sea for two short days, and already he hated it.  Well, to be exact, it wasn’t the sea he hated, but boats.  Unnatural, unruly things that bobbed and heaved and stank of unwashed men and salted fish.  At least a good horse was reliable in both gait and stench.  For a moment his thoughts turned to poor Windsmoke, his aforementioned good and reliable horse.  The dappled mare was likely more miserable than he, stabled below deck when she had never before gone a day without the sky overhead.  
  
The order of his thoughts was lost as the hated ship pitched, sending him scrabbling for a hold on the low table, affixed to the floor as it was.  It was the only other stick of furniture in his cramped cabin save for a low chair and a cot with a mattress made mostly from lumps.  Both were bolted to the wall and had the ability to fold away, and did so with all the same inconstant whims of the ship.  (He learned that quite by accident the first night of the voyage.)  
  
Objects skittered and skidded across the table, clattering against the lip that kept them from hitting the floor.  Currently the table served as both dressing table, writing desk, and for food service.  The supper he had only picked at was dangerously close to upending on the unfinished letter to his cousin Reshmi, and  the silver-handled mirror and comb set from his mother was clearly heavier than it looked, judging from the pain in his knuckles where it had collided.  
  
This journey was just going **splendidly** so far.  
  
He took a deep breath, centering himself, relatively certain that the Chosen of the Unconquered Sun didn’t whine about the quality of their living quarters while fleeing for their lives.  ...well, he was pretty sure.  It wasn’t like he had a point of reference.  Matter of fact, most of the points of reference he had about **anything** had all been shat straight into Malfeas.  Twice over his life had been thrown into chaos.  He hadn’t had time to even think about what had befallen him; he had raced east across sand and savannah as if a manticore were at his heels.  
  
Before the ship could heave the mirror against his knuckles again, he snatched it up, staring hard at his reflection.  In the back of his head, he was pleased to find that he didn’t startle when a feminine face looked back at him.  He was getting better at that.  It was a silly thing to jump like a frightened mouse at your own reflection.  He had finally stopped stumbling over which pronoun to use.  Blessed be the gods for that, at least.  
  
  
Six months ago “he” hadn’t even existed.  Six months ago he had made the decision to take the grey, to be viewed by his people as a man, with all the rights and responsibilities thereof.  Six months ago he had murdered his older brother for a sword.  A Delzahn woman couldn’t save the family line, but a Delzahn woman who became dereth was the solution.  Rather than see her bloodline fall into disrepair and shame, she had proclaimed to her parents that she would become dereth on the day of her adulthood ceremony.  She would restore to them an heir so father could retire in glory.  It wasn’t as hard to say as he thought it would be.  Obligation weighed on him like a mountain of basalt, squeezing the words from between his lips.   
  
Fifteen days ago he had been proudly striding the hall of his father’s hold, officially an adult and dereth, ready to shoulder his rightful duties.  The months prior to his ceremony had been spent with the sept’s shaman, who was also dereth, like many of the Delzahn people’s shamans.  (Dereth were uniquely attuned to all things spiritual by virtue of their dual natures, including a persistent rumor that they were regularly lucky in love.)  She was there to guide him, help him understand and accept the decision he had made and what it meant - not outwardly to his people, but inward, when he was left alone with just his thoughts in the night.  The realization of what he’d done made him squirm those small hours before dawn, wrestling with the murder and dishonest reason for his taking the grey.  Many other dereth did so because they chafed beneath the bonds of the gender they’d been born and the role in society that awaited them.  He wondered secretly, blasphemously, how many did it out of familial duty born of murder.  It was likely not many - at least not the murdering part.    
  
Then the Wyld Hunt had descended on the gathering, brandishing their official seals and swords, with a monk of the Immaculate Philosophy at their head.  The monk declared in unctuous tones the dogma, the passages from the sacred text that proscribed giving succor or sympathy to the hated Anathema, the golden devils they preached had riven the world with their evil sorcery.  His father’s extravagant outrage at the accusation was entirely appropriate, but it couldn’t sway the monk’s implications of guilt.  In order to coerce a confession, the monk had made a slight hand gesture.  He could still see the man make it, no more than a waggling of fingers.  But it had caused steel to flash, silver against the throat of a senior wife.  The blade and the trickle of blood it produced were bright against her dark skin, an unforgivable nick on her sublime beauty.  The insult levied against the household would have cost everyone in the sept their lives.  
  
That was when his world exploded in fire.  
  
The Unconquered Sun had chosen him, transforming him from a lamb to a lion in a matter of heartbeats.  Southern Jade Lion.  That was his name now.  His fingers rubbed the spot at the center of his brow where an eight-rayed sun had burned gold on his brow like a challenge.  It had been there for the better part of a week, feeling visible even under the linen of his head scarf.  
  
It had all started because of that damn sword!  His poor dead older brother Bey had been craven - a lover of opium and wine and unvirtuous women.  He would have bankrupted the sept within a week of leading it and left the entire family destitute and homeless.  So father had disinherited him.  Bey responded by spending three days in the arms of flea-ridden harlots and countless jars of cheap wine before announcing he was going to scavenge the ruins within Chiaroscuro, looking for an artifact of wonder to buy himself back into father’s good graces.  Southern Jade Lion, then the eldest daughter, had been suspicious of his boast.  Like the animal she’d later take as her namesake, she stalked him through the broken and derelict neighborhoods untouched since the Usurpation and the Great Contagion.  To the utter shock of the both of them, he had been successful in his hunt, pulling forth a marvelous sword of gold and blue jade from a misshapen pile of rubble.  
  
Something in her craved that sword, something that sent the lion pacing in the bars of her ribcage.  It took hold of him; that wild spirit, as he watched Bey sweating and grunting over his new-found fortune.  He would trade it for drink and whores without thinking, and then whimper like a puling infant when he sobered and realized his squandered opportunity.  That beautiful, wonderful sword would be traded from merchant to merchant, traded for favors and status as some prized jewel in the armory of a Realm toady.  It was disgraceful.  Swords like that were meant to be wet with the blood of the unrighteous, the evil-doer.  
  
Without even realizing it he had throttled his brother Bey with the saffron sash around his waist.  No one had to know that Bey was dead.  Mother often wept at night fearing that he would be cut down like a dog for his behavior.  He would take the sword and a grey sash, and fulfill the obligation to the sept that Bey had thrown away.  It was only right.  Even though he had hidden that beautiful sword in a cocoon made of his sash (still greasy with Bey’s wine-stench sweat) and hidden it away in his bedroom, tongues had still begun to wag.  Perhaps it had been the ghost of Bey, vengeful after his murder and pitiful burial.  Wagging tongues gave way to rumors, rumors that reached the ears of the Wyld Hunt, the attack dogs of the Scarlet Empress designed to exterminate “Anathema” and all their supporters.   
  
That misguided youth had been shattered into a thousand-thousand pieces, but now each piece had been rejoined with pure molten gold.  He was stronger than he ever could have been - as a woman, as a man, as a mortal.  He was Chosen now, a Sword of Heaven.  The Immaculate Philosophy branded him Anathema; a Betrayer.  A consort of demons and a corrupter of men.  He set the mirror down, reaching for the sword.  His sword.   
  
It hissed softly as he pulled it from the plain leather scabbard.  The blue jade and gold of the blade, single edged and curved gracefully, still caused his throat to tighten.  “Where have you been?  It’s been so long!” it seemed to say.  It itched to carve the flesh of evil men, seemed to resent that it had missed that glorious Second Breath where Southern Jade Lion had killed the monk and his thugs with their own swords.  Now he was bound to Great Forks, far to the East.  First by horse to Kirighast, and now trading ships port-to-port thanks to an endless network of cousins and their shipping vessels.  Delzhan families had the tendency to be extravagant, extended affairs, with family coming out of the veritable woodwork in a time of crisis.  (Anathema weren’t quite so reviled in Chiaroscuro as the Wyld Hunt would have liked.)  It had been no small feat to get him smuggled out of Chiaroscuro (involving several hours doubled up in an empty wine jar rattling along on a caravan - extremely undignified but surprisingly efficient, especially since he had been uncontrollably ... _golden_ ... for several hours afterward).  
  
He tossed his head, feeling much brighter - if no less seasick - than he had before.  An apple gone only slightly to leather from age had been included in his meal.  He would take it below deck to Windsmoke, to see how his poor darling was faring.  She would certainly enjoy the apple more than he.  
  
He had to finish that letter to Reshmi.  With any luck he would be put ashore in Jiara by close of day tomorrow, and it had to be on its way by daybreak if it were to make it to Great Forks ahead of him.  There was yet another “cousin” waiting for him there, uncle Temmuk had mused sagaciously, laying a finger alongside his nose.  Southern Jade Lion could only assume he meant another Chosen.  One could never have too many cousins.  Hopefully it was someone who could explain fully what he had become.  The obligation to his family was still there, as was the shame, but it was now a foundation awaiting the construction of something more.  There was a greatness ahead of him.  He could feel it inside him, waiting to be unleashed on Creation.  
  
He was Southern Jade Lion, and he would be worthy.


End file.
